Book Talk | Total Defense: The New Deal and the Origins of National Security

Andrew Preston discusses his new book with Stephen Wertheim & QI's Marcus Stanley

The concept of “national security” has tremendous weight in Washington DC. It is used to justify an enormous range of government activities that sprawl far beyond territorial defense of the United States. Yet we spend very little time considering what “national security” really means or how this vague concept came to play such a central role in American foreign policy. 

Focusing on this critical idea, the Quincy Institute will hold a book talk to discuss Andrew Preston’s new book, “Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security“. This book examines the origins of the doctrine of “national security” in the 1930s in the New Deal and WW2 period, and the continuing relevance of those origins to debates in Washington today. Discussing the book with Dr. Preston will be Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of “Tomorrow, The World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy“, another important study of the origins of the national security state in the WW2 period.
July 2025

15
1:00 PM ET
Sign up today!
REGISTER
Join us for a timely and important discussion with:

Andrew Preston

Andrew Preston is the W.L. Lyons Brown Jr. Jefferson Scholars Foundation distinguished professor in Diplomacy and Statecraft in the University of Virginia's Corcoran Department of History. He previously spent nineteen years as a professor of history at Cambridge University, where he was a fellow of Clare College. He also previously taught at Yale University.

Stephen Wertheim

Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a historian of U.S. foreign policy writes widely about contemporary problems in American grand strategy. Before coming to Carnegie, he was director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute, which he co-founded in 2019.

Marcus Stanley (Moderator)

Marcus Stanley is director of studies at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Prior to joining QI, he spent a decade at Americans for Financial Reform, where he played a leadership role in policy formulation and advocacy to reform regulation of the U.S. financial system. He also served as an economic and policy advisor to Senator Barbara Boxer.
DONATE

© Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
2000 Pennsylvania Ave NW, #7000, Washington D.C., 20006

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.